5 Effective Ways To Segment Your Email DataBase

Correct application of segmentation to a company’s respective email list allows a business to retain its loyal subscribers. After all, who would want to receive content that’s not appropriately tailored for them?

The answer. No one.

In fact, the chance of losing your sway over your faithful subscribers increases significantly when they are sent content that’s irrelevant to them.

And no marketing department wants that now, do they?

Unsub rates are 9.37% lower than non-segmented marketing campaigns. (MailChimp)

A study found that 77% of ROI comes from segmented, triggered and targeted email marketing campaigns (DMA National Client Email Report 2015)

So, segmentation of an email database is essential, to say the least. Let’s take a look at

5 effective methods to do just that, segmenting your email database:

By geography and demographics-

It’s probably the simplest form of email list segmentation that a business can apply to its email database. Not only will it make the content being shared more relevant but it will keep your subscriber engagement high.

For example:

Sending out an offer on diapers for toddlers from a supermarket chain is more relevant to a stay-at-home mom than it is to say, a teenager or a person over 65.
Sure, a teenager might have a kid/kids of their own or the person over 65 might have grandkids, but the odds are more in favour of a 20-50 year-old parent benefitting from such an email

So, a segmented email list makes all the sense in the world.

User activity-

Your email list can be segmented further according to the behaviour of your customers. Going by Mailchimp’s stats, a properly segmented email list by subscriber activity increases email clicks by nearly 16%

That may not seem like much but it is.

For example:

Segmentation of an email list according to the activity of a user can be based on the pages that were visited by your customer.
Or if someone clicked on content that was part of your marketing emails.
Or a segment of people that were still on the fence about a product on your site, a special campaign might just do the trick in winning them over to the other side.

Lead score-

Another way to build a segmented email list is by weighing-in a customer’s lead score.

For example:

This can be done by measuring a combination of demographics, email activity, and a customer’s on-site activity.
A customer can be slotted into either category of a potential prospect, a qualified lead or a red-blooded customer.

This will allow you to target your customer with precision and lets your marketing strategy be most effective.

Purchase history-

Utilizing a person’s past purchase history is an effective way to constantly engage your customer’s attention through relevant email list marketing efforts.

For example:

To someone like me, a self-professed sneaker-freak; a marketing email notifying me of a 30% discount on Air force 1’s is definitely going to get my attention.
If you keep track of the fact that I just bought a pair of sneakers, you could probably send me marketing snippets of sneaker-related accessories, a reminder mail of the latest designs by the same manufacturer, etc.

So it would make sense to measure your marketing efforts based on a customer’s past purchase history.

Psychographic segmentation-

Is nothing but dividing your market into segments based on a customer’s personal traits, attitudes, values, interests, and lifestyles.

For example:

By lifestyle we mean, if the person lives in a rural or urban area. If they go to school, college, office-going or anything else like that.
Interests would imply if I prefer a Lord of the rings book or a cookbook.
Values or attitudes are directly co-related to how we were brought up. This speaks volumes about a person’s habits.

By effectively segmenting your email list, you give yourself the best possible edge when it comes to developing an effective marketing strategy that will see your business grow by leaps and bounds.

A content curator who focuses on start-ups B2B marketing platforms.
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